


Mirage

by kangeiko



Category: Alias
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/M, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-21
Updated: 2005-06-21
Packaged: 2017-10-07 18:13:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/67827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/pseuds/kangeiko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sydney and Sloane dance. Set post <span class="u">Prelude</span>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirage

**Author's Note:**

> _**Challenge response**_  
> [](http://yahtzee63.livejournal.com/profile)[**yahtzee63**](http://yahtzee63.livejournal.com/) issued a [Greatest Movie Lines Challenge](http://www.livejournal.com/users/yahtzee63/185439.html). I decided to play.
> 
> Done for line 36:  
> "Must you flirt?"  
> "Well, I don't have to, but I find it natural."  
> "Suppress it." – _Ninotchka_

She is horribly certain that she is going to lose her temper one of these days and ruin everything.

She should know better, she thinks. _He_ taught her better. It is the one thing she feels grateful for, this ability to compartmentalise and lock up all the inconvenient little uncertainties and fits of pique that make her want to stab him with a salad fork. Although, clearly, there are a few things he has kept to himself.

(A waitress carrying a tray of champagne flutes to the main hall passes them, and she thinks of the eighteen different ways she could kill her companion with a sliver of crystal.)

Like an army of ants, his gaze crawls across her face and neck to settle at the hollow of her throat.

She resists the urge to shudder (she knows better).

"Sydney." He does not say, _my dear_, but she hears it anyway. Her teeth grit without any input from her brain. "I understand your reluctance to continue with this alias, but unless you have devised a better plan in the last fifteen minutes, I suggest that you smile a little. Our host is watching us quite intently, and I do not wish to be shot for _not_ seducing my charming assistant."

He's wearing the requisite formal attire: black tuxedo, pristine white shirt, bowtie.

It's another ~~quasi-date~~ field mission that requires dinner and dancing.

Years ago, she kissed him during a mission: a besotted young woman and her distinguished lover, out for a stroll. She had palmed a neuro-inhibitor from a terrorist cell; he had fed her wine.

Three months ago, they had another soiree in Beijing.

(She should really find a different job.)

The tuxedo and shirt he's wearing, she thinks, must be his own. The bowtie, however... the bowtie is evidently CIA-issue (though she does not recall Marshall providing him with anything other than standard op-tech) because it is slightly askew. When was the last time she saw this man in anything other than impeccably-pressed clothing?

(And then there was this other mission, back when she had been working at SD6 for only a few months, when he had taken her out for an orientation mission to judge her capabilities for himself. They had eaten Szechwan food and smuggled an informant out to safety. She remembers thinking, he's _magnificent_. She has had three years to convince herself otherwise.)

The faint scar across one forefinger catches the light as he flicks imaginary lint off one sleeve.

Sydney really should know better.

Almost without thought (habit, it's _habit_, that deadliest of deadly sins) she reaches out, nimble fingers adjusting the starched fabric, smoothing down the wrinkles in the shirt. She cannot bear to see his expression at this intimacy (weakness) and so turns her face away.

In the mirror, a besotted young woman is fixing her lover's tie.

Sloane's hands close over hers. "Shall we dance?"

*

fin


End file.
